The following writing sample is a chapter of my doctoral dissertation.

I am currently turning it into a book manuscript, (tentative) entitled:

Knowledge, Place, and Experience in the Migrant Journey: How

Central American Migrant Youth Negotiate Violence in Mexico

Angel A. Escamilla Garcia

Yale University
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Chapter 3: Caravans, Microchips, Organ Trafficking, and Donald Trump: The Role of
Rumor in the Migrant Journeys of Central American Youth

A Free Ticket to the Border?

Saltillo, Coahuila, June 19, 2019.

It is seven in the morning at the migrant shelter near the

railroads in Saltillo, Coahuila, a large industrial city in Norther

Mexico located 185 miles south of the closest U.S. border (see

figure 10). The 100 migrants who spent the night at the shelter

are starting to chatter. Something odd happened the night Figure 10. Map showing the location of Saltillo.

before.

Before everyone went to sleep last night, three Salvadoran migrant men who were staying

at the shelter gave three first-class bus tickets to three other migrants for free, and then left shelter.

The bus was set to depart at noon the next day for the border city of Nuevo Laredo, a 180-mile

trip. They gave the tickets to three different migrants, none of whom were traveling together. None

of the recipients had met the Salvadorans before arriving at the shelter the day before, and the

recipients received the tickets in different areas and times.

Stories about the three ticket donors and why they gave away free tickets had begun to

circulate by morning. As word spread, migrants started to gather around the three recipients to

discuss whether they should use the tickets or not. One of the migrants who had met the men

mentioned that "they said they had found a smuggler that would take them to the border in a private

car, so they didn’t need to take the bus anymore. They just gave away the tickets so someone else

could use them."

But not everyone’s readings are so generous—many migrants have learned to be deeply

suspicious of any help that could also turn out to be a deadly trap. Some of the migrants commented
 72

that the three Salvadorans were suspiciously well-dressed and clean compared to the rest of them

and spent just one afternoon and one night at the shelter. They left in the early hours of the morning,

and the shelter guard said that a fancy car came to pick them up. The strangest fact continued to

be that they gave away the tickets for free. "Who gives away free bus tickets?"

One of the recipients was Humberto, a 17-year-old boy from Honduras, and a group was

gathered around him. One migrant asked him if he noticed anything unusual about the Salvadorans.

Humberto recalled that the three men talked to him the night before during dinner, asking him

questions about his family back in Honduras and in the U.S. When they heard this, the group

gathered around Humberto started to mumble. "There it is!" said one man, as if that fact was the

last piece of evidence that solved the puzzle. One of the migrants, an older male, said to Humberto:

Look, if I were you, I would not use that ticket. I have heard stories about how the
cartels go into the shelters looking for migrants to kidnap. Narcos make more
money kidnapping people than running drugs and recruit other migrants to use them
as bait. They use migrants to bring other migrants to them. When I passed Celaya
[a city in Central Mexico], I saw Central Americans with machine guns along the
train, working with the narcos.

Another migrant chimed in:

I have also heard stories about migrants who get recruited and then enter shelters
to tell other people they know how to get to the border. And then once people listen
and follow them, they get into isolated areas and then call their bosses to come pick
them up. Once you’re in their hands, terrible things can happen. You are a kid, and
these days, children like you are used for organ trafficking. Your eyes or kidneys
will be removed. This is my third time making this trip, and I have heard stories
like this from the first moment I entered Mexico, be careful. Maybe you are lucky
and will get to the border comfortably on the bus, but nobody is at these shelters is
giving away free bus tickets.

All the men in the group started to nod, approving the comments with their concerned

faces. Yet another commenter chimed in:

From here to the border is when things get ‘hot.’ We are entering the most
dangerous part of the trip, the border. I have heard that ever since I started in
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Guatemala. Narcos have a feast on the border because they know we want to reach
the border. They wait for us to come to them, like chickens.

Then a man inspecting the bus ticket interjected:

I have heard that first-class buses are not being stopped by immigration. But, if
these migrants are working for the drug cartels, they know when you are taking the
bus and the exact seat you will be in. They might be waiting in the middle of the
road and will come right to your seat. If I were you, I would not get on that bus.

After the group disassembles, Humberto confesses

to me that he is still considering taking the bus. The

opportunity to take a 4-hour bus ride to the border

instead of a 12-plus hour trip atop a train is too

tempting. At the same time, he knows that the

danger of encountering drug cartels between

Saltillo and the border is very real, and very

Figure 11. Picture of the dining room during breakfast.
serious. Humberto takes his breakfast (see figure

11) and keeps talking to other migrants about what to do. I hear him repeatedly asking, “Should I

go or not?”

By 11 am, one of the other two ticket recipients has decided to leave the shelter and go to

the bus station. The migrant who is leaving tries to convince Humberto to go, but Humberto says

that he doesn’t want to take the risk of being caught by narcos. As he watches the man leave,

Humberto laughs nervously and tells me, "If he gets there safely, then I missed an opportunity, but

if he gets caught by the narcos, then I made the right decision. I will never know what happens to

him, if all these stories are true or not."

That night, I was in the recreation area and heard some of the migrants telling others who

had just arrived about the events of the morning. One man told the newcomers: "Last night, we
 74

were sleeping with the enemy, and we didn’t know it. The narcos passing as migrants were offering

free bus tickets, acting like they were helping us. But it was just a lie. What they really wanted was

to take us to an area where they could catch us!" People around the newcomers, including

Humberto, nodded in approval, and one said, “it’s true!"

Introduction

Humberto’s dilemma about whether to use the suspicious bus ticket exemplifies a situation that

Central American youth frequently face as they move through Mexico, making crucial decisions

based on information they cannot verify but upon which they must rely.

During my research, I found that information and knowledge of the migration journey were

crucial to know where, when, and how to move. However, despite the need to know, youth moved

with a substantial, if not complete, lack of reliable information along their journeys. This condition

allows the circulation (and consideration) of all kinds of stories and claims about issues and

opportunities they might encounter during their journeys.

While scholars have shown how information transmitted among migrant networks

facilitates international migration flows, there is an increasing consensus that migrants move in

precarious conditions like the youth I study. Thus, information is often scarce and unreliable. In

the case of youths migrants’ journeys, while they can be certain (to some degree) about the places

and the general danger they were about to face, they lack information and details about what could

happen as they move. This lack of knowledge was especially crucial in the case of violence; youth

migrants don’t just want to know about the potential dangers of the journey (some lethal) but do

want to know how to avoid them.

The lack of access to knowledge creates a context in which youth migrants (and any other

precarious migrants) must pay attention to rumors to make sense of the potential dangers ahead.
 75

Just like the case of Humberto, the potential benefits of free bus tickets came with the possibility

of ending up kidnapped at the U.S.-Mexico border. With no other sources, Humberto listens and

evaluates many rumors about violence to make his final decision.

Broadly speaking, rumors are neither proven nor certified as true or accurate, but they are

considered relevant enough or true enough to be circulated. During my research, I found how these

types of stories played a significant role in filling the information gaps about the migrant journey

that other sources could not. More importantly, they impacted the way youth migrants approached

their migrant journeys.

This chapter focuses on the intersection of information, migrant movement, and violence

to explore how rumors can shape the way youth experience their journeys through Mexico.

Specifically, this chapter describes how rumors fill migrants’ knowledge gaps and how migrants

use that information to make decisions and set expectations about what is ahead in their migrant

journey. A close examination of the role of rumors demonstrates the power of micro-level

interactions (transmission of information) in shaping migration flows. The chapter begins by

reviewing the role of information and rumors on international migration flows and how the

precarity of information and extreme violence that Central American youth face while moving

through Mexico triggers rumor use. Next, I provide a descriptive classification of the rumors I

collected and discuss how and where youth migrants spread and believe rumors during their

journeys. I close by demonstrating the capacity of rumors to transform how youth migrants move

across Mexico and the potential negative effects of putting youths’ lives at risk of more suffering.
 76

Information Worth Considering: The Importance of Information and Rumors on

Migration Studies

The vital role that information plays in the decision of people to migrate has been thoroughly noted

and examined by scholars of international migration. Through migrant networks, social media, and

smugglers, people learn and transmit information about the experiences other living abroad as well

as any resources that can facilitate or imped their migration (Elsner, Narciso, and Thijssen 2018;

Schwabe and Weziak‐Bialowolska 2021). Information about immigration laws, job opportunities,

or living conditions in countries of destination circulates among migrant transnational

communities and creates a worldview about migration that determines how migrants decide to

move (Uy-Tioco 2007). However, while information is crucial among migrant communities, it is

not uniformly transmitted. Instead, the access and type of information that a migrant receives is

shaped by factors like their social or cultural capital (Garip 2008; Barglowski 2019).

Demographics such as level of education, resources gender, race, or even geographic location can

influence the information a migrant receives, and this knowledge ultimately determines access to

or denial of additional knowledge and opportunities. However, regardless of the degree of access,

information is recognized as a critical component that facilitates, shapes, and maintains migration

at different levels in any form or level.

Following the research on the importance of information over migration and its access and

limits, scholars have found that for precarious migrants like refugees or displaced people,

information and its circulation can have a different process than other types of migrants. The

extreme conditions that people escaping war, natural disaster, or persecution experience put

migrants in a position in which they do not have reliable access to information about destinations,
 77

laws, or resources. Further, the information they have access to is not trustworthy and can be

prejudicial.

Otis and Campbell (2017) have used the term "information precarity" to describe how

Syrians living in refugee camps in Jordan have a permanent lack of access to reliable information

on immigration laws and politics in both their home Syria and Jordan. This lack of knowledge is

substituted by false and misguided information to make sense of their reality and future as refugees.

The need and precarity of information that migrants in precarious situations can experience makes

them prone to transmitting and believing information about other types of migrants could be

discarded. Scholars have found, for example, how refugees can believe fake news about

immigration policies or, more recently, about COVID-19, despite this news being refuted by local

experts (Parkinson and Behrouzan 2015). Their stubbornness to believe false information is

attributed to the lack of access to other sources of information (information precarity) and their

cultural mistrust of official sources of information.

One of the forms of communication that information precarity triggers among migrants in

precarious conditions is rumors. Sociologist Tamotsu Shibutani in his classic study "Improvised

News" (1966), defined rumors as the collective interpretation of situations whose formal

explanation is unavailable, ambiguous, or distrusted. In his book, Shibutani argues that rumors

arise in "ambiguous situations" (1966, 57), instances in which institutional and formal channels of

communication are not enough to resolve confusion or challenges that a group or a community

faces in a situation. For Shibutani, rumors are more prone to being seen as credible when the

circumstances are dire, like in the case of precarious migrants.

Since Shibutani’s seminal analysis of rumors, there has been more intense interest their

study. Despite being explicitly questioned as potentially misguiding and dangerous for institutions
 78

and vulnerable groups (Kimmel 2004), scholars have recognized rumors as widely present in

different settings and groups worldwide (Campion-Vincent 2007; Donovan 2007). From gold-rush

rumors during in the American frontier (Dowd 2015) to rumors about race and violence (Odum

1969; Fine and Turner 2001; Young, Pinkerton, and Dodds 2014; Knopf 1975), or rumors about

places like hospitals (Pearson 2003), the stock market (Schmidt 2020), and, more recently, rumors

shared through social media (Sunstein 2014; Burrell 2012; Sommariva et al. 2018; De Domenico

et al. 2013) are not an exception but a routine among social life.

Much like the examination of rumors across different settings, there has been an expansion

on the theory on rumors. Sociologist Gary Fine has moved forward from Shibutani’s situational

definition and conceptualized rumors as "an expression of a belief of topical relevance that is

spread without secure standards of evidence, given norms for beliefs" (Fine 2007, 5). Fine’s

exploration of rumors goes towards how rumors are collectively discussed and considered as

potentially accurate (plausible) and of interest to the group (relevance). For Fine, in the evaluation

of rumors, we can find how issues like the reputation of the person spreading rumors and the

specific culture of the group discussing the rumors can affect the way rumors are believed and

considered as relevant and potentially accurate. In Fine’s analysis, rumors are evidence of a society

or a group that is invested in discussing and evaluating information out of the control sphere of

institutions (Fine 2007), and these rumors are capable of changing how people and groups see and

understand their world (Fine 2010).

For the case of international migration, the study of rumors has been relatively scarce until

recent years. Many of the approaches on rumors and migration are analyses of rumors about

migrants. Rumors on migrants often involve stories of violence and danger that represent a threat

to the countries of destination (Fine 2010; Casademont Falguera, Cortada Hortalà, and Prieto-
 79

Flores 2018; Hajimu 2009). Rumors about migrants, while inaccurate, are widely circulated and

fueled by anti-immigrant sentiments framework of how groups portray or preconceived certain

groups (race or religious minorities) already as threatened or a menace.

While scholars have studied rumors about migrants, less research has been done about how

migrants circulate rumors. Historically, there has been evidence that migrants have used rumors to

spread information about their potential to move to places. During the great migration, for

example, Southern black people circulated rumors about the less-racist and favorable labor

conditions in the northern cities of the United States (Lemann 1992). These rumors traveled across

the south in different forms and variations and contributed significantly to the decision of many

black to migrate to northern cities.

Just like in the past, today’s international migrants, like Humberto, are still circulating and

discussing rumors. For example, human geographer Michelle Collyer has documented how transit

migrants in Northern Africa follow the recommendations of other migrants about cities where they

can look for work while waiting for the crossing to the U.S., despite the recommendations’ dubious

nature (Collyer 2007b). And in her extensive work along the Central American migrant route,

political scientist Noelle Bridget has pointed out how rumors on, for example, the closing or

reopening of railroads, are circulated among Central American migrants in an attempt to avoid

potential obstacles ahead in the journey (Brigden 2018, 72). While rumors do not necessarily

influence or substitute the economic and social forces driving international migration, migrants do

use them to fill knowledge gaps and and to decide on their movement (Belloni 2019, 47).

But, while scholars have found how rumors can act as facilitators of information among

migrants, the nature of rumors as potentially false or misleading information can have a negative

effect on migrants. For example, different studies have shown how refugee’s lack of access to
 80

official and accurate information about European asylum laws trigger the circulation and belief of

negative rumors about policies (Carlson, Jakli, and Linos 2018; Wall, Otis Campbell, and Janbek

2017) and Lebanon (Ozkul and Jarrous 2021). These negative rumors are spread either in-person

or through social media, ultimately generating distrust among refugees towards the asylum system,

undermining any credibility or approachability. Rumors among migration thus, seem to be a need

but also a double-edged source.

Following literature rumors on migration studies, this chapter examines the circulation of

rumors among Central American migrant youth during their journeys in Mexico. In this case, I

define rumors as asseverations about the migrant journey to which migrants consider worthy of

attention and believe despite knowing that they might not be correct, accurate, or true. During my

fieldwork, I could identify almost 87 different types of rumors about violence, laws, migrant

routes, and imprisonment in the U.S. and Mexico. I not just collected the rumors, but in many

instances, I witnessed how rumors were transmitted and evaluated. Like what literature suggested,

the extreme scarcity of information that Central American youth have about the dangers and

opportunities during the journey contributes to the proliferation of all sorts of stories, tales,

legends, and asseverations about the migrant journey that are explicitly doubted yet considered.

But also, as scholars found out and the case of Humberto illustrates, rumors can lead to dangerous

situations or increase the already precarious conditions of youth migrants during their journeys.

By putting rumors at the center of analysis, I aim to illustrate migrants’ negotiation process.

While moving, Central American youth are in critical need of information about the dangers and

potential opportunities. However, the dual nature of the rumors—that they can be beneficial or

prejudicial—puts youth in a situation where they must decide what to believe. With little room to

deliberate, youth migrants often have to negotiate the veracity and plausibility of the information
 81

and make decisions based on it. Below, I start by describing the environment of precarious

information that youth migrants experience during their journeys, which triggers their reliance on

rumors. Then, I show how rumors are circulated and believed (or not) by youth migrants. Finally,

I will discuss the negative effects that rumors.

Changing and Unexpected Violence, and the Precarity of Information

No matter how well-planned a youth’s route was, unexpected situations during their journeys

would arise, and they would have to gather information and make decisions in real-time. At the

same time, during their journeys in Mexico, youth dealt with a precarity of reliable information

about the dangers. This precarity has three features: it is constant, it is hard to avoid, and it can

lead to critical consequences. This section expands on these three features of information precarity

and how they are linked to the proliferation of rumors among migrant youth during their journeys.

During their journeys, truly unaccompanied youth recognize that they move with

significant or total information gaps about dangers awaiting them as they move. For example,

during my fieldwork, I observed how youth often realized that they miscalculated the distances

and time it would take them to move from place to place and admitted to not being sure that the

routes they had taken were safe, even though they were moving based on what they had heard.

There was not a single instance in which the migrant youth I met claimed to be sure about the

information they had. Quite the contrary: they were almost constantly seeking to corroborate

information they had and gain new information.

The lack of information is also not solved through experience. The youth I met who were

attempting to migrate through Mexico for second and third times explained that there was no way

to know if their previous experiences would be accurate anymore. Part of this is due to the

randomness and constant shifting of the violence of the journey. For example, a youth migrants
 82

who had made multiple attempts consistently observed that checkpoints had moved from their

previous attempts, and places through which they had previously moved and considered safe were

now places they could be robbed, detained, or persecuted. This environment of constant change

casts uncertainty over the entire journey.

Similarly, this rendered the experience transmitted from migrant to migrant also

insufficient. While eating lunch in a migrant shelter in Queretaro in central Mexico, a group of

youth traveling together discussed their next move with another group of migrants, some of whom

had already made the journey the youth were contemplating. When discussing the potential

presence of robbers near the train rails outside the city along the route, one migrant mentioned

that, a few years ago, he was robbed in that location. But another member of the group said he had

slept outside one night near that same spot a few weeks ago with no issues. The youth still took

the story about potential robbers to be true; they decided that there was a chance of being robbed,

so they would limit their time in that area and only when there was daylight. Still, based on this

information, there was no way to be sure.

As this group of youth demonstrates, choosing to follow a rumor can be beneficial for

youth, but rumors can also lead migrants astray and tremendous implications. a result, youth face

an incredible puzzle: they face a constant precarity of information that is almost entirely

unsolvable, and they must be careful when they rely on the only information they have that permits

them to continue moving.

The information that circulates among migrants includes tales, experiences, stories, and

rumors. In this chapter, I focus on rumors, both due to the volume of rumors I heard while I was

in the field, and second because youth constantly questioned whether rumors were true or false.
 83

This places rumors at the center of my concept of negotiation of violence because rumors do not

ensure evasion violence but considering which rumors to follow is part of youths’ process.

An Overview of The Rumors I Collected and How I Collected Them

While I did not start my research collecting rumors, they were immediately salient in my fieldwork,

and I began to take note of them very early on. In practice, rumors can come in many forms, such

as tales, short sentences, or legends (Fine 2010; Aldrin 2005). Rumors can spread across all kinds

of groups, places and can endure over time. We can also find that rumors can evolve as they are

circulated among people, and we can find many versions and variations of one specific rumor

(Odum 1969; Zires 2005). During my fieldwork, I found rumors in all forms, from short sentences

like "I hear that Ciudad Juarez is the easiest place to cross the border" to detailed stories about the

torture methods that smugglers use on migrants to force their families to pay ransoms. In total, I

documented 114 rumors.

My guidelines for classifying rumors were: 1) their source was either unknown or

unreachable, for example, “somebody told me that he heard that…" or "I have heard stories

about.."; 2) the stories were always contentious—they were not considered to be or proven to be

true or false, but youth found them "persuasive" (Fine 2007:6) or worth considering; and 3) they

were circulated by or among youth minors. While I heard far more rumors than those that I have

categorized and analyzed, I focused for purposes of my dissertation only on rumors that were

circulated by or considered by youth migrants.

As I collected the rumors and my research progressed, I noticed patterns, themes, and

repetitions of certain types of rumors. I classified these rumors into four themes: Violence,

Mobility, Immigration and Detention, and Opportunities & Challenges in Mexico. Table 1 shows

the distribution of the 114 relevant rumors I collected by theme. Because many rumors were
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Table 2. Type and Frequency of Rumors

Type of Rumors Total Rumors Unique Rumors (excluding
repeated rumors)
1 Violence 38 23
2 Mobility 27 10
3 Immigration and Detention 30 12
4 Opportunities & Challenges in Mexico 19 9
Total 114 54
repeated more than once, the second column shows the number of unique rumors falling within

each of those themes: 54.

Rumors about violence were rumors where the central lesson or point illustrated physical

or mental harm youth could suffer during their journeys. One example is the rumor mentioned by

Humberto above about organ trafficking by criminal groups. For mobility rumors, focus of the

rumor was whether it was possible to move or not, for example, "Reynosa is the easiest place to

cross the border." Immigration and detention rumors are primarily stories about detention practices

and immigration policies in either the U.S. or Mexico. For example, the only Nicaraguan youth I

met during my fieldwork mentioned that part of what motivated him to make the journey was that

he had heard the U.S. was not detaining or deporting Nicaraguans that reached the U.S. border.

The last category—opportunities and challenges—focuses on rumors about the benefits and

downsides of places or people along the journey. The most common rumor in this category was

"People keep saying that Monterrey is a place with a lot of work opportunities and good salaries."

I heard this rumor circulated seven different times by youth (in addition to many other times by

adults).

These four categories correlate with the most pressing issues that youth migrants encounter

over the course of their journeys, and the areas about which they had the most uncertainty:

violence, detention, and deportation. When I asked migrant youth what they feared the most while
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in Mexico, the most common answer was fear of violence and of being deported from Mexico.

Youth also frequently asked me what would happen if they got caught by the U.S. Border Patrol

and whether I had heard about violence or checkpoints in a particular part of Mexico through which

they may travel.

Categorizing the rumors and their frequency helped limit and organize my data and

understanding patterns and variations. However, the description and recollection of rumors don’t

go deep enough to understand how rumors are used. My analysis goes beyond the description and

classification and makes a deep analysis of how these rumors are understood and circulated among

youth migrants and their consequences in the migrant journeys. In the following sections, I will

detail my observations about the circulation and use of rumors and their relation to the migration

journeys of migrant youth.

When and With Whom Rumors Are Shared

The sharing or rumors does not occur randomly or casually. Instead, rumors are shared because

they are important or relevant for the groups that are discussing them and paying attention to them

(Zires 2005). In in my research, rumors were shared in contexts that were relevant to the rumor.

For example, when Humberto discloses his predicament about using the bus ticket, the group of

migrants that surround him start to circulate rumors with potential explanation and consequence

of using it.

Rumors are also shared when they are relatable. Rumors feed a discussion of the issues that

concern the group—in this case, violence. Ample literature discusses how violence is perhaps most

important issue discussed among migrant during their journey on Mexico (De León 2015; Bello

2000; Escamilla García 2020). Rumors thus work in combination with the already-established

knowledge about the violence on the journey to provide alternative or additional information on
 86

this seminal matter. Mullen (1972) has already pointed out that it "is likely that rumors act as

reinforcement for already existing legends” (Mullen 1972, 97-98). For example, when I asked

Maria, 19, from Guatemala, what she knew about the violence of the journey, she told me that her

cousins and friends in the U.S. had told her about the harsh conditions and difficulties of the trip.

Despite knowing this, she seemed concerned because she had heard rumors that a criminal group

was raping women on the train she was supposed to take. In this case, there was a two-way effect

between the rumor and the main story. The rumor strengthened the main story of violence in the

journey, and at the same time, the rumor was plausible for Maria because of the existing story of

violence and the journey.

Even in such harsh circumstances, migrants do not freely share rumors with everyone in

every instance. I found that two factors are important in understanding when migrants share

rumors: who the information was being shared with, and how the sharer felt about the information.

Some rumors are only pertinent to certain members of a group, and so are shared with

individuals who will be affected by them. For example, 17-year-old Joanna, from Honduras,

reported a rumor shared with her in 2017 specifically because she was pregnant. During her

interview, I had had just turned off the audio recorder and asked her if she had any other questions

or anything to add before leaving the room. She paused for a second, and then she said:

Joanna: Angel, may I ask you an embarrassing question?

Me: Yes, of course!
Joanna: I hear that The United States puts chips in the heads of migrants’ children
that are born in the U.S. so they can locate them wherever they are. I have been
thinking about it, and you are going to laugh, but I can’t stop thinking about it. Is
that true?
Me: I haven’t heard of anything like that, could you tell me more?
Joanna: Well, last week, I heard from a group of ladies that if my baby is born in
the U.S., it might get a chip implanted in its head, so they know where the baby
will be all the time. You know, maybe it’s not true, but I can’t stop thinking about
it. I am afraid that they will put a chip in my baby’s head. If that’s the case, I think
I won’t cross the border until my baby is born here in Mexico. That’s why I wanted
 87

to ask you; because you live in the U.S. I know it sounds crazy, but I can’t stop
thinking that it might be true, and I don’t want to keep moving to the U.S. if it’s
true.
Me: Joanna, I am almost certain this is not true, but I will look around and do some
research to see what I find, but don’t worry.
Joanna: I’d appreciate if you could look into it!
Me: But who told you about this?
Joanna: A group of ladies that are staying in this shelter. Some already left, but a
couple of them are here.

Joanna directed me to one of the women, and I went to ask her about it. The woman explained that

she heard this story from another woman who saw it on Facebook. When I asked her why she told

Joanna, she explained: "I told her to keep it from happening to her. I am not lying, I told her what

I have heard from other women; maybe it is not true, but who knows! It is better for her to hear it

know rather than be surprised later.”

After this conversation, I tried to find anything resembling such a practice in the U.S. or

elsewhere. While I could not find any specific information about chip implants, I found that the

U.S. is currently using ankle bracelets to track migrants with a pending court hearing after being

released from immigration detention (Balcazar 2016). This practice, however, is not used on

minors.

The next time I saw Joanna, I told her that I did not find any information about the U.S.

government implanting chips in migrant children. She was still not convinced that this rumor was

baseless. “I am still thinking about it. I’ve heard more stories about crossing the border; pregnant

women are being released with a bracelet on their arms, too. I am still thinking about my baby.

Maybe it’s not true, but I don’t want that to happen to my baby.” In this case, Joanna was not

necessarily sharing the rumor with me but corroborating it, nevertheless, she hears the rumors

about implanting chips on babies due to her pregnancy and from women who had children

travelling with them. I found similar cases of rumors that were shared to specific people, for
 88

example were share with minors with tattoos who were explicitly warned with stories of how

migrants with tattoos were puts in jail after being detained in the U.S. border. Rumors thus, are

generally circulated on places and among people to whom might be relevant.

Separately, the sharer must be comfortable sharing the rumor. Gary Fine’s study of rumors

has shown that rumors challenge social order because they indicate to society that "information

from authoritative sources is either incomplete or inaccurate" (Fine 2007:7). As challenges of

social order, rumors may be sanctioned by mainstream social discourse who often control the

discourse about a topic. During my fieldwork, I found that youth rarely discussed rumors in front

of people they believed would make fun of or look down on them. Instead, they shared rumors

with people they might trust or consider equals and will not sanction them. While scholars studying

information have shown that certain type of information might flow easy among people or groups

that share more feature in common like gender, class, or race (Subaşi 2017), in the case of rumors

it was the uncertainty that created the sense among minors that they were going to be judge for

sharing a crazy and exaggerated story. This was not an easy phenomenon to observe among

migrants in the field since it inherently deals with the withholding of information. However, I saw

it in my interactions with youth.

In the case of Joanna, for example, she did not corroborate the rumors about the microchip

with me until the recorder was off, and even so, she did it timidly, saying she felt some "shame"

for asking. This happened in other interviews as well—youth would feel more comfortable toward

the end of the interview, and so they would share more rumors at that point.

On more than one occasion, I saw how youth migrants did not share rumors with lawyers

or advocates who, as experts on immigration issues, would be able to confirm if they were true or

not. For example, when I asked one young man why he would not ask the immigration lawyer
 89

working at the migrant shelter the same question he had asked me—whether "the Mexican

president was going to give all migrants that were in [the southern Mexican city of] Tapachula

permission to cross Mexico freely”—he said he felt that the lawyers would probably get mad at

him for believing in something that was not true and potentially cancel his asylum application.

This suggests that he saw the lawyer as a figure that follows the mainstream discourse, and so the

youth was not comfortable asking the lawyer about the rumor he had heard.

Rumors are not individual but social products that exist and are discussed and evaluated in

groups (Aldrin 2005). Like in the case of Humberto, during my fieldwork, I often saw the

emergence of rumors in groups discussion among migrants trying to explain situations that happen

or concern not just one migrant but to the entire group. However, during my research, I found how

sometimes youth migrants were reluctant to share rumors if in the group were people that would

judge them for believing these stories.

For example, in 2019, while in Saltillo, a professor from a local university came to talk to

migrants about the dangers of crossing the desert spanning the U.S. border with the northern

Mexican state of Coahuila. During the talk, one migrant raised his hand and asked the professor if

it was true that "[U.S.] immigration sends airplanes at night to see if migrants are crossing the

border." The professor said that he did not think that was true but that Border Patrol does use

thermal cameras when patrolling the area. Right after, another migrant raised his hand and asked

if "it is true that some cactuses are poisonous?" A laugh broke out across the group of around 40

people, followed by comments like "don’t waste the time of the professor with this question!" and

"you are crazy!" The professor still answered the question and explained that, while cactuses are

not poisonous, you can get infections in a wound caused by the cactus’s spines because of

unhygienic conditions. After the professor’s response, the migrant defended himself to the group:
 90

"You see, it is better to ask to be sure." After this moment, a woman asked if mothers with minors

were being allowed to cross the border (instead of being deported). This time, the professor

answered that "he wasn’t sure" and that his advice was to stay in Mexico and apply for asylum or

avoid the danger of crossing the U.S. border by crossing the river or through the desert.

While none of the migrants disputed the professor’s information while he was there, they

kept discussing these topics and rumors among themselves in the following hours. Stories about

both deportation and successful crossing of mothers with children circulated during in the hours

that followed. There were also arguments against the professor’s answer: how many migrants saw

red lights flashing in the sky while crossing the border, evidence of how flying airplanes

surrounded the border.

In this case, the professor was seen as an authority who, while threatening in the beginning,

did not stop migrants from sharing rumors, and then the social tension that the presence of the

professor disappeared. In addition to that, the professor’s responses to the migrants’ questions did

not fully negate the rumors; quite the opposite, migrants had alternative explanations to the main

story. When I asked the professor about rumors, he explained that migrants often choose to believe

the rumors they share among themselves rather than his advice.

Thus, as the literature suggests, rumors are not randomly shared but instead arise when

groups must explain uncertain events that matter. At the same time, because rumors can be a

challenge of the facts shared and maintained by formal channels of communication, they are not

shared equally when potential sanctioning figures are nearby. For example, in the case presented

here, while the professor answered the questions, rumors on the same issue kept circulating when

he left. Ultimately, my research shows that youth do not share rumors unless they are comfortable

or feel that they will not be socially sanctioned. This suggests that there are many rumors among
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migrants that impact the migrant movement that is never even known to actors that support the

mainstream discourse, such as policymakers, media, and even aid organizations.

Collecting Rumors for Later

While the circulation of rumors occurs in specific contexts and among groups with common

interests, youth may initially discount a rumor but recall it later when the circumstances change

during their journeys. The factors affecting the weight a migrant youth gave to a rumor were the

youth’s judgment of the person sharing the rumor; the youth’s personal circumstances, needs, and

doubts about the journey; and how frequently the youth heard the same rumor repeated.

As part of the circulation of knowledge, rumors are evaluated not just by their content but

also by who is sharing the information. The reputation of the source of information is considered

key to understanding the degree of acceptability of the information (Origgi 2018; Conte and

Paolucci 2002). In the case of information like gossip or rumors, the reputations of those who are

presenting the information matters in how it is accepted (Fine 2007; Donovan 2007; Paz 2009;

Haviland 1977). Youth carefully consider the reputability of the source of the rumor. For example,

the youth I met commented on how rumors were discarded when the migrant (or other person)

sharing it had features that denounce them as unreliable, such as the use of drugs, alcohol, or gang

tattoos. These features in turn, were seen as an indicator of bad habits or bad intentions, which

turned the rumors into either a blatant lie or a potential trick.

On the other end of the spectrum, youth may consider a rumor trustworthy not because of

the source’s reputation but because of how frequently they hear it. For example, nine youth in my

sample mentioned hearing, on more than one occasion, stories of how along the U.S. Mexican

border, the army and police were cooperating with the local criminal groups to assault migrants.

A similar story was mentioned another six times but on the southern Guatemala-Mexico border.
 92

These stories increase youth migrants’ fear of interacting with the police or army. In three of these

cases, youth mentioned that while they were unsure if this story was true, they were more worried

about it and took the stories seriously because they had heard it multiple times from different

people and at various parts of their journey. An in one case, the youth mentioned how the first time

he heard the story, he thought it was a lie, just to scare him. However, as he heard the same story

repeated again and again, he started to accept it as true. In this case, the strength and credibility of

the rumors came from their frequency rather than the people’s reputation.

The degree to which youth believed rumors also depended on what the youth already knew

or thought they knew about their journeys. Because rumors thrive on ambiguous situations, the

lack of information makes people react differently to unproven information like rumors (Gadarian

and Albertson 2014). For instance, I frequently heard rumors involving whether youth would be

deported if detained in the U.S. A common story was that the U.S. was not deporting minors.

Under different iterations of the rumor, youth detained while entering the U.S. were said to be

given legal status immediately, or the U.S. would pay to fly them directly to their families in the

U.S. A version of this rumor was known by 39% of the youth in my sample, and they had no other

reliable source of know what would happen to them if detained in the U.S. as a minor. Without

such information, they payed intense attention to these types of rumors.

Relatedly, minors with relatives or friends who had already previously crossed the U.S.

border as minors were not very interested in or even aware of rumors about the detention in the

U.S. They felt they had already learned about the process of detention from their networks. For

example, Demetrio, a 17-year-old from Honduras, who I interviewed in northern Mexico in 2019,

and whose older brother had already migrated through Mexico to the U.S. as a minor almost two

year before him, discusses the specific parts about the rumors he heard:
 93

I have heard all kinds of stories about what is going to happen to me once I cross
the river [the Rio Grande] and get detained by immigration. But I know that
sometimes people exaggerate stories about crossing to scare you. My brother told
me what would happen; I will be detained and put in the "hielera," a cold room
where they put everyone detained that day. Then, the police are going to ask me
questions. I have to say that I am a minor, and then I will be sent to a place where
they send all the minors, it’s like a hotel. My brother was in that place for around
two weeks. He said not to be afraid of what people said. I won’t be deported.

Except for calling U.S. Border Patrol the “police,” Demetrio’s description of what would happen

to him once detained in the U.S. is quite accurate. He had preexisting knowledge from his brother,

so he disregarded other rumors he heard. However, Demetrio continued:

My problem now is that since I left my country, I have heard that Trump said that
minors are not going to be allowed to enter the U.S. and instead are going be
deported back to Honduras. It’s because of the migrant caravan that tried to enter
the U.S. by force. You know that there are rules to follow in the U.S.; they don’t
like people to come and break the laws. I am worried about that because my brother
crossed before the caravan. And my brother can’t tell me if the story [about
deportation] is true or not. The other day I encountered a minor while we rode on
the train, and he was coming back to the U.S. after being deported a couple of
months ago. He said that if you lie, laugh, or if you are not serious during the
interview, they will deport you immediately. I’m not sure if the border of Tijuana
is like that, but I’m worried about it.

The rumor about Trump and deportation in this case, reached beyond what Demetrio already

believed he knew, and thus, he took it into account. Youth consider rumors to be a source that can

fill their knowledge gaps along the migration route. Having information from other sources made

them less likely to believe certain rumors that overlapped with their preexisting knowledge.

However, in circumstances outside of those areas of knowledge, youth took rumors into account.

Examining when and to whom rumors about the migrant journey are shared and believed

by youth migrants aligns with the literature’s theoretical propositions about how rumors appear to

make sense of confusing situations that cannot be explained through traditional and official

sources. Since the dangerous journey of these youth is a great period of uncertainty, the youth are

constantly circulating rumors with the thousands of migrants that are passing going the same
 94

experience. This context explains the large number and variety of rumors I encountered during my

fieldwork.

However, as I show in this section, because youth migrants can have different uncertainties,

their degree of interest and circulation of rumors varies depending on what aspects of the journey

they are trying to explain. Moreover, rumors are also not shared with everyone equally, and

migrants may prefer not to share them with people who do not share the same concern and

uncertainty, or who could sanction them for believing these stories. These findings, as previously

mentioned, suggest that rumors often pass the radar of official and formal institutions that usually

try to fight them back and consider them as pernicious. As the precarity information continues, the

circulation of rumors on the migrant journey is unlikely to stop, and, as long as youth migrants

keep moving, the need for stories that fill gaps of knowledge and offer alternatives to keep migrants

out of violence and with options to move will remain.

Rumors in the migrant journey are not just shared and believed, but they also are actively

used by youth while migrating. In the next subsection, I will cover the second aspect of rumors—

their actual impact on the migrant journeys of youth.

Rumors in Action: The Caravan, Donald Trump, and Facebook Groups

Because rumors offer alternative views or responses to social situations or events, they have the

power to change human behavior. I observed rumors impacting youth mobility decisions, and also

how migrants interacted with other migrants and with institutions along the migrant route. In other

words, rumors can transform the way youth migrants move and act during their journeys.

Below, I show how rumors impact the journeys of youth migrants. I start by showing how

rumors have the potential to trigger the movement of migrants by offering answers to sudden

episodes of incertitude during the migrant journey. Then I show that rumors do not just condition
 95

the movement, but also the manner through which youth move and interact with people, places,

and institutions. Finally, I show how the nature of rumors as informal knowledge of questioned

veracity can lead to unintended negative consequences for minors when used. These findings

overall shed light on the profound impact that rumors can have on shaping migrant journeys, an

often-understudied topic in scholars of international migration.

Rumors as Triggers of Movement

While rumors do not substitute the macro forces that motivate migration like poverty, violence,

and family reunification, they offer some explanatory power about the actual movement of migrant

youth. Sociologists Milena Belloni and her research of Eritrean migrants and their journeys and

movement from Africa to Europe have shown how, despite not changing the strength of the

information that migrant networks can have, rumors can change the perceptions that migrants and

potential migrants can have over their countries of destination (Belloni 2019). For the case of the

youth in my fieldwork, since the information about the migrant journey from migrant networks

was minimal and the youth’s imaginaries about the journey lacked details, the role that rumors had

in transforming youth’s journey was important. During my research, I found how rumors can

function as triggers that by adding a new element of risk or opportunity along the migrant journey,

motivating movement.

The most salient case of the triggering effect of rumors during my fieldwork was the

migrant caravans. While there had been several prior migrant caravans, in 2018, a group of around

five hundred migrants, mainly from Honduras, started to gather in San Pedro Sula (the largest city

of Honduras) to walk toward the U.S. While moving, the number of migrants grew to up to five to

seven thousand migrants, mainly from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, that joined the

group. While during their movement across Guatemala and Honduras, the caravan was tried to be
 96

dismantled and stopped by the police and army at then, and after almost two months, many were

able to reach different points of the border between Mexico and the U.S. (BBC 2018). This migrant

caravan had a large impact on public opinion in the U.S. and Mexico as images of masses of

people, including children and women, walking across highways generated both fears of

uncontrolled migration to the U.S. and compassion for the conditions that motivate their migration

and their movement (Fabregat, Vinyals-Mirabent, and Meyers 2020).

During my fieldwork in 2019, I had the opportunity to meet several migrants who had

participated in that caravan, including three youth: one from El Salvador and two from Honduras.

They did not begin with the caravan but instead joined once it was already moving. While all of

them mentioned that they had plans to move to the U.S. (one of the for second time) none of them

had planned to start the journey when the caravan happened. Each of these youth, none of whom

knew each other, had learned about that caravan first via Facebook and WhatsApp groups were

migrants and potential migrants share information, and later from TV, where commentators said

that the migrants in the caravan would not be detained or stopped in Mexico, and this and motivated

them to join the group. While all them recognize that they were going to come to the U.S. at some

point, their actual movement was triggered not by the caravan but by the information about the

caravan. Two of them recognize that were not sure if the information was true, but the images of

people moving and convince them to try it.

Similarly, the strong anti-immigration agenda that Donald Trump had during his

presidential campaign generated a lot of confusion and rumors that triggered the migration of some

youth during his tenure. Obregon, 17 years old from El Salvador, mentioned how, while he was

already planning to migrate to the U.S., his decision to leave his country and start the journey was

accelerated after Trump was elected. During The 2016 presidential election of the U.S., Obregon
 97

recalls hot he heard rumors both from the family in the U.S. and social media that Trump would

close the border, build a wall, and deport all the immigrants who attempted to cross the border.

For him, this rumor was credible because he had heard about Trump’s anti-immigrant and pro-

wall campaign rhetoric on TV and Facebook. In this case, the risk of a potential closure of the

border and a tough journey motivated his rapid departure.

The triggering effect of rumors can happen even when youth are already moving. Everardo,

19, from Guatemala, applied for asylum in July of 2016 in Mexico while staying in a migrant

shelter in the south-most Mexican state of Chiapas. He had been at the shelter for six months,

waiting for his application to be adjudicated. However, in November of 2016, right before Trump

won the presidential election, Everardo abandoned his application and decided to keep moving

north without any legal status:

I was in Chiapas applying for refugee status when we heard on the news that Trump was
going to be elected. And I had already talked to my family [in Guatemala] and other
migrants here and there [in Mexico], and they commented how that if Trump won [the
presidency], he was going to close the border and start to deport migrants that crossed the
border. Everything we have heard is that Trump doesn’t want more migrants anymore. So,
I decided with another group of migrants [that were in the shelter in Chiapas] that it would
be better to risk it and keep moving to the U.S. without refugee status before Trump started
the deportations.

The cases of Everardo and Obregon Monthly Number of Detentions of Minor Migrants in Mexico and the U.S. from
2014 to 2018

were not unique. Activists across 12000

10000
Mexico reported that many migrants 8000 Jun-16,
Oct-16,
6,704
4,750
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left shelters in the days following 4000
Jan-17,
4,405
4805
2000
Trump’s election and abandoned their 0
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asylum applications to reach the

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Mexico U.S.

border quickly. The situation was so

Figure 12 Number of Detention of Minors in Mexico from 2014 to 2018 (Sources:
(CBP 2019; UPMRIP 2020a)
noticeable that it made it to the news
 98

on Mexican TV (Noticieros Televisa 2016). This trend is also noticeable if we observe the number

of minor migrants’ apprehensions from Mexico and the U.S. In Mexico, detentions of minors

began to rise dramatically from the start of the Trump Campaign, and they drastically dropped

after he was elected in 2016 (see Figure 24). The same patterns are observable with the number of

minors detained by the U.S. on its southern border in the same period. During that time, the number

of minors detained reached an all-time high number (October 2016) right before Trump won the

election and decreased dramatically in December of the same year (CBP 2017). No other

significant event that might have drastically altered the migration flow during this period could

have triggered this massive youth movement other than Donald Trump’s anti-immigration

campaign.

I am not claiming that rumors were the drivers of migration; it is well known that Central

American migration to the U.S. has been driven by violence, economic opportunities, and family

reunification (Lorenzen 2017). However, rumors that originated from the tension created by the

anti-immigration rhetoric of Trump triggered the actual movement of youth in the moment. Here,

rumors were the last event that triggered the already confusing, chaotic (and in many ways violent)

event that Trump set during his presidential campaign by implying it would close the border.

Rumors and the Migrant Route

Rumors also affected the routes that migrants took through Mexico. Youth frequently considered

rumors of mobility at different points of their journeys. If no other information is available, or if

the youth did not have a secure crossing plan preestablished with his or her family, the youth might

act based on rumors about which border area to cross or which route to take. The relevant rumors

dealt most frequently with the presence, or lack thereof, of immigration officials and criminal

activity in certain locations.

 99

A typical mobility rumor was that a certain place, town, or border area was the easiest,

safest place to cross and avoid potential violence or detention. Many youths chose their route to

the border—either to the eastern or western side of the border—following rumors about migrants

having had an easy time crossing in that area. On top of choosing the routes based on rumors,

youth were also guided about what method to use to move, like taxi, bus, or walking. In one case,

a youth mentioned how he was taking the train, but took a bus from Guadalajara to Tepic (western-

central Mexico) in 2015 and then continued again by train because he had heard that authorities

were not patrolling that particular bus route, and the bus was an easier way to move than the train

with its many dangers.

Rumors Affect Youth Migrants’ Behaviors and Interactions

Finally, rumors shape youth migrants’ behaviors and interactions. Rumors about violence, or

about obstacles they might face can shape how youth approach their journey and interact with

other migrants and institutions.

By offering information in the form of stories about the journey, rumors provide youth

migrants with ideas about what happens if they interact with institutions like migrant shelters,

hospitals, or with certain people like lawyers, police, or immigration officers or with places like

deserts, rivers, or trains. In the absence of previous experiences dealing with this situation, rumors

become sources worth considering instead of risking negative experiences like detention or

deportation.

Rumors related to age were especially prevalent among youth. Seven minors (of the 86 in

my sample), all under the age of 18, told me that they heard that they would be detained if they

entered any migrant shelter or interacted with the police or a hospital. This rumor was taken more
 100

seriously by four of these youth and shaped how they interacted with governmental and civic

institutions in Mexico differently. Two of these youth were preferred to sleep in the surrounded

areas outside of migrant (like sidewalks) shelters than to risk being detained at a shelter due to

their age. One other minor took a different approach. In 2015, I met Pablo in a migrant shelter in

Tapachula for weeks before he told me that he was not 18, as he told the shelter, but 17 years old.

He lied about his age when entering the migrant shelter because he heard from other migrants that

"if you enter a shelter as a minor, you will be detained."

Similarly, Sotero, a 16-year-old I met right outside of a shelter in Guadalajara, told me that

he avoids entering migrant shelters and instead goes by their shelter’s entrance asking for food and

clothes. When I asked him why he said other migrants told him that he would be sent to

immigration authorities and detained indefinitely as an orphan. Sleeping outside when a shelter is

available may seem extreme, but because Sotero considered the rumor about the detention of

minors plausible, it affected how he approached his journey.

By helping youth to previsualize institutions and people that they haven’t met but generally

are fearful or cautious, rumors predispose youth migrant’s interactions in the migrant journey, and

in doing so, they can shape their trajectories by shaping imaginaries about the journey.

The Limitations and Dangers of Rumors

As demonstrated above, the youth migrants I study can move across Mexico guided by rumors.

However, they sometimes find out that these rumors can turn are untrue or misleading and put

minors in situations of risk. The reason for rumors to become dangerous is due the way their own

inherent features. I found four factors that limit the ultimate usefulness of rumors during the

migrant journeys of youth. Their lack of details, their lack of capacity to account for changes, and

their purposive use by others to mislead youth. In this section I will explain each of these factors
 101

and use examples to show how believing rumors led youth into negative experience during their

journeys.

First, the content of rumors tends to be brief, anonymous and simple (Renard 2013), and

in my research I found due this feature it can provide incomplete information. The case of Tacho,

18, from El Salvador, illustrates this limitation. Tacho, like almost all of the youth I interviewed,

could not pay a smuggler at any point along the journey, and was seeking a free way to cross the

border. So, he was looking for the area of Mexico where it was easiest to cross the U.S. Border

without having to pay a smuggler.

The sources of information on this topic were other migrants’ stories about their own

crossings, rumors from other migrants about what they had heard about crossing, or social media.

Even though youth had no way to verify that any of this information was true, they considered it

plausible and would often determine their trajectories based on what they learned. Interestingly,

youth at each of the four border areas I visited told me that they were there because they thought

it would be the easiest place to cross, and youth in each of the four border areas told me they had

not gone to the other border areas because they considered them to be too dangerous.

I met Tacho in Mexico City during his second attempt to reach the United States. He

explained that during his first attempt, he heard that crossing the U.S. border was easy during the

rainy season because the muddy terrain made it difficult for Border Patrol and narcos to guard the

border. So, in 2016, he attempted to cross the river while it was raining, and nobody was patrolling

the border. However, because of the rain, Tacho found that the river’s current was strong, and it

was dragging branches and debris with it. When he was halfway to cross the river, Tacho almost

drowned and decided to turn back to Mexico. While he survived that experience, he also saw

another youth who was also crossing at the same time drown. In his own words, "If I was told that
 102

the current would be that strong, I probably wouldn’t have tried to cross." This is an extreme

example of how rumors can be unhelpful and even deadly.

Second, rumors are constructed and transformed from the collective knowledge and

experiences of groups and therefore they may be of limited value. Thus, when a youth takes a

rumor out of context, the rumor can be of limited, or even negative value. Adalberto, 19, of

Honduras, experienced this limitation. When I met him in Guadalajara in 2019, his plan was to

cross the U.S. border and turn himself into the Border Patrol. When I asked him why he would do

that, he explained: "In the U.S., a person is a minor until they turn 21." And, unlike adults, minors

are not immediately deported when detained; instead, they are given the opportunity to appear in

immigration court and to be reunited with family while waiting for their appearances.

Adalberto learned about the age of minority being 21 from friends who had previously

crossed when they were 19 and “gotten papers" in New York state. However, Adalberto was

mistaken. In New York, a person under the age of 21 can apply for legal status under an

immigration regulation that provides for “Special Immigrant Juvenile Status,” or SIJS. SIJS is

dependent in part on state law, and in New York state the underlying state court order required for

applying for SIJS can be acquired through the age of 21 (www.nyc.gov). However, that does not

apply at the border, and under the applicable immigration law, minority is defined as under the age

of 18 (6 U.S.C. § 279(g)(2)). Thus, if he turned himself into Border Patrol, he would be considered

an adult.

I explained this to Adalberto, and he started to reconsider. He decided to post a question in

a Facebook group for Central American migrants asking is somebody knew if 19 years old people

were not being deported in the US border. In just a few hours, he had dozens of responses from

people that he assumes are other migrants, containing all kinds of answers, from "minors are 17
 103

and under, immigration will deport you,” to "currently, the U.S. is letting everyone cross, go for it

and you will make it.” Now confused, Adalberto left the next day for the Mexican border city of

Ciudad Juarez [on the train]. He said, "I’ll make my final decision once I get to the border."

Thus, in this case the rumor that Adalberto follows was taken out of context and that

situation was going to put him on potential detention. One of the reasons for which Adalberto

believed this rumor could be the phycological and calming effect that rumors have to provide

explanation (often through extraordinary stories) to confusion and chaotic situations (Mullen

1972). However, by using the rumor to guide the crossing to the U.S. border, Adalberto put himself

in danger of deportation.

Third, rumors are in constant transformation, either over time, or when are adapted in

different groups or cultures (Zires 2005) However, in a context like the migrant journey when there

is a constant change on the way obstacle and violence are encounter, rumors might not account for

the changing scenarios of the migration route, like changes in policies and shifting immigration

enforcement. For example, I observed during my research how a change in the context of the

migrant route will catch migrants by surprise when following all types of information. For

example, Everardo, the same youth mentioned above, was told that the train could be taken from

the southern border town of Tenosique, however, when he arrived there, he realized that things

have changed and now the train was not crossing there anymore (Voz de América 2014a). The

most extreme case of this kin happened to Juan Carlos, a 19-year-old Honduran that followed the

idea that Tijuana (border city with San Diego) was the easiest place to cross to the U.S. and asked

for asylum without putting his life at risk like crossing the desert or the river. When he got there,

he realized that things were much different:

When I got to Tijuana, I realized that it wasn’t how I was told it would be. Everyone
had told me that Tijuana was the easiest place to cross for people like me who
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couldn’t pay (a smuggler). But when I got to Tijuana, I found that things have
change and now you need to pay a coyote if you want to cross to the U.S. border.
The only way to cross without paying was to walk far away from the city and then
try to cross through the fields. I didn’t know that, and I spent time there, beside the
border, for weeks. I didn’t know what to do. Eventually, I got desperate and walked
along the river until I found an empty field and walked into the U.S. Half an hour
after crossing, I got caught by the border patrol. I tried to apply for asylum, but my
case was denied, and I was deported back to Honduras. This is my second trip. This
time I am going in another direction, to cross by Acuña, [a border city in the state
of Coahuila], where I heard it’s easier to cross. We’ll see if I make it this time.

During my fieldwork, I heard the story that Tijuana was an easy crossing place from 12 different

minors; some of these youths were not going in that direction, yet they listened to the same story.

However, despite its popularity, I couldn’t find any evidence proving the rumor. On the contrary,

since the Trump administration started, the petition of asylum in the U.S. has become denied at

higher rates (AIC 2019), and more migrants’ cases are denied right at the border or sent back to

Mexico to wait for a response, or like in the case of Juan Carlos, deported. Thus, in such constantly

changing policies, enforcement, and violence like the migrant journey, rumors might become false

and mislead migrants on their travels.

Fourth, because of rumors’ persuasive capacity to influence decisions in situations of

uncertainty (Southwell, Thorson, and Sheble 2018; Sunstein 2014; Vosoughi, Mohsenvand, and

Roy 2017), actors sometimes spread, utilize, or even create intentionally misleading rumors.

During my conversations, activists, immigration lawyers, and migrant shelter staff noted how

smugglers often spread false rumors to encourage migrants to pay for their services or choose a

certain route. These false rumors were either stories that cause fear in migrants or to make them

believe in an easy crossing or policy to motivate them to travel with the smuggler.

During one of my focus groups with youth migrants, we discussed the stories that they had

heard about the journey before starting it. Among the answers of the focus group were

extraordinary and worrying stories about the migrant journey, primarily from Facebook and
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WhatsApp groups, where Central American migrants share information. These comments said

things like, “The border is open, the U.S. is letting everyone enter,” or “The border is going to

close next month, whoever wants to cross should do it now.” Youth commented how these fantastic

stories were attractive and made them think about the danger of crossing and the need to hire a

smuggler instead of traveling alone. One youth mentioned how after commenting on one of these

Facebook posts saying that the Tapachula border was closed for all migrants, he got a reply from

a person of the group offering his services as a smuggler. This situation ultimately alerted him that

the rumors were fake. However, since they did not have money to move with the help of a

smuggler, they had to go through although paying attention to such rumors.

In my own experience, I witnessed two instances in which migrants shared extraordinary

or exaggerated stories in-person. Although these migrants did not come out as smugglers, they did

leave migrant shelters in unusual circumstances. One of these instances was a Nicaraguan who I

met in Tenosique (southern Mexico) in 2016. This person of a middle age often publicly claimed

to have lived in the U.S. for many years and traveled back and forth from Central American to the

U.S. by himself. During the week I met him, he exclusively spoke to me in (broken) English

(though I am Mexican) and any other English speakers. He often commented how he knew the

migrant route well, and he knew how to move without taking the train. He eventually left the

shelter, and some youth commented how other adults mentioned that he spent the week secretly

(from the migrant shelter staff) a group of migrants to guide, presumably for a fee. While this

person was never caught trying to offer his services as a smuggler (something prohibited at migrant

shelters), the rumor about him being a smuggler who tried to recruit migrants spread widely among

many migrants. Stories like this were common everywhere I go, and many activists and lawyers
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will warrant migrants about the bad intentions that anyone who shared these types of fantastic

stories can have.

Traffickers’ use of rumors to misinform to influence migrants’ decisions demonstrates the

dangerous and persuasive power of these forms of communication. While these rumors might be

of sporadic duration, and youth can find them too incredible to be believable, it is not hard to see

how migrants can believe them in desperate or naïve moments. The last negative effect of rumors

described here shows one of the darkest sides of rumors in the migration route. In this case, rather

than being a collective product crafted in informal ways that seek answers about the migrant

journey, rumor becomes traps purposely designed to prey on migrants’ precarity and needs to profit

or harm them.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I demonstrate the impact of rumors on the migration journeys of Central American

youth in Mexico. The prolonged periods of uncertainty and violence that youth face while in

Mexico fuel the wide circulation of rumors that match youths’ most prominent concerns: safety,

mobility, detention, deportation, and immigration policies.

While they are often viewed in current discourse as false or misleading, rumors cannot be

evaluated as either “good” or “bad.” Rumors help migrant youth on the move gain confidence to

avoid the surveillance and enforcement of Mexican and American officials who seek to prevent

the youths’ movement. Likewise, rumors can convey information that other actors and institutions,

like migrant-serving organizations, lawyers, or scholars, are unable to share due to institutional

and even moral limits. For example, it is impossible to imagine any of these groups dispatching

information on chip implants. But rumors create the space for the transmission of unproven,
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unvetted stories about anything that migrants may view as potentially harmful to themselves and

their goals.

This is not to deny that rumors can also have negative consequences for migrants. This is

due to rumors’ inability to adapt rapidly enough to constantly shifting circumstances in the migrant

journey, the same characteristic that often makes the valuable to migrants and smugglers. Since

rumors do not come from an official source, they can be intentionally planted to create false

expectations of a safe crossing among migrants. In the harsh circumstances of the migrant journey,

the truly unaccompanied minors I met put their lives in the hands of rumors, though the

consequences of a false rumor can be catastrophic.

Rumors provide a window through which to observe the role that information plays in the

migrant journeys of Central American youth, and international migration flows around the world.

Unlike the most studied sources of migrant knowledge (like the social and cultural capital provided

by migrant networks, policies, and media outlets), rumors exist in a space where information is

neither true nor false, but something to be taken into consideration. As shown in this chapter,

rumors can have a significant impact on migrant youths’ journeys. They often operate at the most

micro level of the migrant journey, affecting youth migrants’ daily decisions and instantaneous

actions, and collectively affecting migrant flows. This perspective fills a gap that macro-level

analyses miss. And, so long as youth migrants move through Mexico, there is no reason to believe

that rumors will stop playing a major role in their migration journeys.